India buries Pathankot attackers after bodies rot in morgue

The four terrorists were killed after they attacked the Pathankot Air Force station in January.

The bodies of four Pathankot attackers were buried on Wednesday, May 4 2016. Picture: An Indian security personnel stands guard on a building at the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in Punjab, India, Jan. 5, 2016.

The four terrorists who were killed after they attacked the Pathankot Air Force station in January were finally buried on Wednesday night, after their bodies started to decompose at the hospital morgue. They were suspected to have been part of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad.

The bodies of the terrorists, identified as Nasir Hussain, Abu Bakar, Umar Farooq and Abdul Qayum, had reportedly started to rot at the Pathankot hospital mortuary, where they had been kept for the last five months, due to frequent power cuts, according to the Hindustan Times.

On Wednesday, officials from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) moved the bodies of the Pathankot attackers to a secret location and buried them, according to NDTV. The channels cited sources as saying that the Pathankot attackers were buried close to where the terrorists from last year's Gurdaspur attack were buried.

The NIA had reportedly collected DNA samples and fingerprints to identify the Pathankot attackers and had shared them with the Pakistani joint investigation team (JIT) that had visited India in March, according to HT.

According to NDTV, Indian authorities had offered the Pakistani JIT to take the bodies, but the latter had refused.

The four attackers were killed in anti-terror operations after they stormed the Pathankot airbase on Jan. 2, and the 80-hour operation had left seven Indian security personnel dead.

The Pathankot attack also put a rude break on India-Pakistan relations, which had been reignited following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Lahore in December.